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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association. Vol 40. No. 7. April 13 1977
Plenary Session
Plenary Session.
The reasons given for not holding a plenary session are of great interest. I personally raised the matter of plenary discussion with John Hinchcliff last year. The circulated programme stated: — "Proposals for action, as revised after discussions, will be given to all participants; a discussion and then we will finish by committing ourselves to the cause of peace in a simple ceremony."
Thus the abolition of the plenary was a sudden and unpublicised change — not Hinchcliff's assertion of the opposite, which he gave as two of his reasons for not holding one.
In a later Convention programme, there was no mention of a plenary. Consequently Canwar, after being denied any statement on the Convention floor, sent a delegation to Hinchcliff. Hinchcliff walked out on the delegation leaving it to another organiser. After discussion with Canwar participants we discovered that a large number of action groups had asked formally or otherwise for a plenary session. Their requests likewise were ignored.
| 1) | No discussion was allowed. |
| 2) | The 'vote' was put by Hinchcliff who wasn't even in the chair. |
| 3) | The vote was put as a shouted, "Who wants to listen to these interruptions?" |
| 4) | No count was taken. Hinchcliff guesses 50 out of 700 "voted for the plenary. An organising committee letter claimed "no more than 20." |
| 5) | No call was even put to find out those against the "vote." |
| 6) | No motion was declared at the time. |
To present this as a Convention decision, democratic or otherwise is a great travesty.
Hinchcliff says that the statements delegates stood for on the Friday evening were affirmations, not resolutions. Why then were they called resolutions in material distributed at the Convention?
Delegates had their views sifted by the organising committee through action group reports. These delegates have yet to be contacted as specific group members, yet the stated aim of the Convention was to have action and decision only and especially from these groups.